Dutch researchers successfully raise radishes, peas, rye and tomatoes in soil mixed to match that of the red planet – giving hope that settlers could grow food.
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Nation states cause some of our biggest problems, from civil war to climate inaction. Science suggests there are better ways to run a planet.
By Debora MacKenzie
Try, for a moment, to envisage a world without countries. Imagine a map not divided into neat, coloured patches, each with clear borders, governments, laws. Try to describe anything our society does – trade, travel, science, sport, maintaining peace and security – without mentioning countries. Try to describe yourself: you have a right to at least one nationality, and the right to change it, but not the right to have none.
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Miniaturization is one of the most world-shaking trends of the last several decades. Computer chips now have features measured in billionths of a meter. Sensors that once weighed kilograms fit inside your smartphone. But it doesn’t end there.
Researchers are aiming to take sensors smaller—much smaller.
In a new University of Stuttgart paper published in Nature Photonics, scientists describe tiny 3D printed lenses and show how they can take super sharp images. Each lens is 120 millionths of a meter in diameter—roughly the size of a grain of table salt—and because they’re 3D printed in one piece, complexity is no barrier. Any lens configuration that can be designed on a computer can be printed and used.
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“What would you do right now if you wanted to read something stored on a floppy disk? On a Zip drive? In the same way, the web browsers of the future might not be able to open today’s webpages and images …”
Air combat veterans proved to be no match for an artificial intelligence developed by Psibernetix. ALPHA has proven to be “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI seen to date.”
Retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee recently went up against ALPHA, an artificial intelligence developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate. The contest? A high-fidelity air combat simulator.
And the Colonel lost.
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